Authority in Language

Part 1 Prescription and standardization: language prescription and its consequences; lingusitics and prescription; attitudes to language; languages standardization. Part 2 Standard English and the complaint tradition: the history of standard English; the function of language complaints in maintaining the standard; correctness and semantic shift; George Orwell and the moralistic tradition; standardization and the teaching of literacy; conclusions. Part 3 Spoken and written norms: language change and language maintenance; spoken English and the effects of literacy; the spoken and written channels; conclusions. Part 4 Grammar and speech: prescription and spoken language; prescription and contextual variability in speech; the grammar of non-standard English; conclusion. Part 5 Linguistic prescription and the speech community: the social distribution of linguistic variants; some common prescriptions - a critique; a wider perspective on prescriptivism; group identity and language variation; conclusion. Part 6 Linguistic repertoires and communicative competence: communicative competence; types of linguistic repertoire; some practical considerations; observing and analyzing linguistic repertoires; conclusion. Part 7 "Planned" and "unplanned" speech events: spoken and written language; planned and unplanned discourse; the discourse of structure of interviews; applying sociolinguistic principles to test situations - an example; some wider implications; conclusion. Part 8 Some practical implications of prescriptivism - the linguistic adequacy of language assessment procedures: linguistic critiques of language tests - the question of linguistic realism; linguistic critiques of language tests - the question of cultural linguistic bias; concluding remarks; coda.